Cloth Seal, Searchers, George Haigh, Image & Found by ExpIInut.
Found east coast of Lincolnshire, 40 x 14mm, 10g.
GEORGE HAIGH // 22 above 32, 2 to side (top middle).
A strip like seal consisting of two sub-rectangular sections joined by a connecting strip and riveted together at the opposite end. The numbers normally apply to the length, weight and width of the cloth as measured by the searcher. See No.244, Fig.33, Geoff Egan, Lead Cloth Seals and Related Items in the British Museum Occasional Paper 93. This is a broader seal and most likely from an earlier period. The seal shown here is more likely to be from the late eighteenth or even nineteenth century.
From Paul Cannon, "‘Geo Haigh’ is also recorded as an official cloth searcher in the following HUDDERSFIELD & DISTRICT HISTORY. The essay has the title “18th Century Regulation of the Narrow Woollen Cloth Trade”. Written by Edward Law it is one of the titles from Law’s series ‘Huddersfield & District History’. The essay is based around The Act for the Better Regulating the Manufacture of Narrow Woollen Cloths in the West Riding of the County of York, 1738. For a copy of the act see From Weaver to Web.
Law lists the first cloth searchers appointed under the act which he has gathered from the surviving extensive Quarter Sessions records of 1738. He presents the results as a table under the river; the area/mill; name and annual salary of the cloth searcher. I suspect that all these names could be expected to have appeared on cloth seals. George Haigh was paid £6 for his work at the mills at Crosland Hall on the River Holm. Law’s essay also refers to other members of the Haigh family involved in the production of narrow woollen cloths."